-- By Tom Phillips
One by one, the lights are going out in Morningside Heights, as restaurants close, grocery stores and pharmacies limit the number of customers inside, and other businesses stay open, but with reduced hours and only to hand things off at the door. For the first time ever, customers have to line up outside West Side Market... and live without the late-night luxury of Koronet Pizza.
Suddenly, we know several people sick with the coronavirus. One is in a hospital in Brooklyn. Her daughter is not allowed to visit.
Tom's Restaurant is closed for the duration. The Hungarian Pastry Shop went dark today. Everyone with a second home or children in the countryside has left town. A young couple in our building were packing their vacation gear and their big dog in a car Saturday, hoping to head for the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The beaches there are closed, but you can't really close a beach, right? I don't know, I said. But driving with New York plates, you might get pulled over and quarantined. Rhode Island is already doing it. Who knows where they'll crack down next?
The rest of America finally has a reason to persecute New Yorkers. We may replace Asians in the role of chief scapegoats, reviled and spat on in the streets, or locked up until we prove ourselves healthy. Only because Fox News is itself based in New York can we be confident that what they call the "Chinese Coronavirus"won't turn into the "New York Coronavirus" on Fox TV.
One by one, the lights are going out in Morningside Heights, as restaurants close, grocery stores and pharmacies limit the number of customers inside, and other businesses stay open, but with reduced hours and only to hand things off at the door. For the first time ever, customers have to line up outside West Side Market... and live without the late-night luxury of Koronet Pizza.
Suddenly, we know several people sick with the coronavirus. One is in a hospital in Brooklyn. Her daughter is not allowed to visit.
Tom's Restaurant is closed for the duration. The Hungarian Pastry Shop went dark today. Everyone with a second home or children in the countryside has left town. A young couple in our building were packing their vacation gear and their big dog in a car Saturday, hoping to head for the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The beaches there are closed, but you can't really close a beach, right? I don't know, I said. But driving with New York plates, you might get pulled over and quarantined. Rhode Island is already doing it. Who knows where they'll crack down next?
The rest of America finally has a reason to persecute New Yorkers. We may replace Asians in the role of chief scapegoats, reviled and spat on in the streets, or locked up until we prove ourselves healthy. Only because Fox News is itself based in New York can we be confident that what they call the "Chinese Coronavirus"won't turn into the "New York Coronavirus" on Fox TV.
